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Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a real time strategy city-building video game developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra Entertainment. An expansion pack, , was released the following year and included new features and a new campaign. Background Pharaoh follows the historical path of the Ancient Egyptians and the large empire that they created in Egypt. As such, many features and additions to Pharaoh were unique to the game, such as flood plains, which were not seen in any future release. The game introduced the concept of monument building for the first time, marking a major gameplay addition that was not seen previously. The monument-building mechanic continued into all future city builders, but in alternate methods. Gameplay Like in before it, the player begins as a low-ranked person, the Village Elder and progresses through the ranks to reach the ultimate position of power: the Pharaoh. The game begins in the Predynastic Period and ends in the New Kingdom, charting the many achievements of Egypt over time, including the construction of capital cities (like Men-Nefer), many monuments (the Stepped Pyramid of Saqqara, for example) and fighting ancient empires and even battling in the Civil War of the Middle Kingdom. Pharaoh includes a much more in-depth and expansive tutorial than that seen in Caesar 3: instead of introducing every mechanic within the space of two missions, the tutorial is expanded across the first two campaigns, with the basic city building in the "Predynastic Period" and more advanced city building in the "Archaic Period". Unlike in Caesar 3, the missions are not specifically divided into "Peaceful" and "Military" and some missions must be completed by the player, regardless of what missions they are choosing: such "forced missions" are usually done to include famous and important Egyptian historical constructions, such as the Stepped Pyramid, the True Pyramid and Khufu's Pyramid Complex. However, in general, when a mission choice is provided, one mission will usually feature heavy military and one will feature little to no military action at all. A mission with no military action does not necessarily mean troops will not be needed: players may need to build a military force to dispatch troops to the aid of cities in the empire, usually opening trade routes or increasing favour. Patches Two patches were released for Pharaoh, mostly fixing bugs, but the second patch added a major feature that had not been available at launch. The first patch, 1.1, which was released in March 1st 2000, fixed a number of user-reported bugs, as well as included the Mission Editor, which made it possible for users to create their own missions just like in the campaign. However, the mission editor is extremely limited and only allows the creation of singular missions: players cannot create full-length campaigns with briefings and would be required to develop several separated missions with a linked story provided in a text file. Additionally, some events, such as the Earthquake event, cannot be triggered in the mission editor and requires a player to use the N.A.F.T.A custom mission to make a mission with an earthquake. Some of the bugs that were fixed included missions being won when the monument was only "nearly complete", stonemasons randomly vanishing while working on pyramid complex causeways, rotated Temple Complexes causing random crashes, fixes to trade (such as docks bugging with a Ra blessing in effect, and land traders being stuck if they can't reach their desired storage yard). However, while the patch fixed a number of instances of campaign missions becoming unwinnable, it did not fix all instances (for example, Thinis during the Middle Kingdom is still able to become unwinnable if the first troop request to Men-nefer is not won). The patch unintentionally managed to introduce a number of bugs into some campaigns. The most notable mistake of this patch was a change to events in the mission Iunet: after fulfilling requests from Abu, this route would be opened, but the player's kingdom rating would keep going down after this with the same message ("although trade with Abu has been opened, the Egyptian people are displeased with you"). This would keep occurring until the rating reached zero, causing an invasion from no favour. While the mission could be won in such a state, it required the constant sending of gifts to counter-act the constant drops. The official advice from Impressions' at the time was to use a cheat code, or play the alternate mission "On". The second patch, 1.2, which was released in April 5th 2000, fixed only 3 reported bugs, one of them being the Iunet Kingdom rating bug mentioned above. A bug with the rotate map button help text was also fixed, along with a rare "double mouse click" bug in some in-game menus. Interestingly, the 1.2 patch was only released for English users, but the fixes are automatically applied by installing the expansion pack for those who are not able to install the 1.2 patch. Despite the creation of patches supposed to fix problems, some bugs are still triggerable. The most notable bug that was claimed to be fixed which still happens (though to a much lesser degree than before the patches) is a naval invasion causing a crash. What causes the bug is uncertain, and is most noticeable in missions with a heavy reliance on naval invasions, such as Rowarty. Players are advised to save regularly and take care when controlling naval vessels to avoid this bug. Reception The game received many positive reviews and remains popular to this day amongst gamers. Category:Pharaoh